Before being Meme, Julio Iglesias stopped a penalty of Di Stéfano, survived almost miracle to an osteoblastoma, became friends with Reagan and the Clinton, acted for Mitterrand and Sarkozy, sang with Sinatra and Dolly Parton, stamped his star on the walk … From Hollywood’s fame, he found his paradise in Miami, fell in love with half the world, sold three hundred million records and was appointed Citizen of Honor of Benidorm, as well as ambassador to the cooked of Lalín and father of the year by an association of surely clueless or horny parents – only God knows – of New York. And yet, Ignacio Peyró argues, this universal man (the best known Spanish of the twentieth century after Dalí and Picasso) has not aroused the interest of the bandages of semiotas and cultural critics who have launched themselves to analyze until the nails of Rosalía or the cross costumes of C. Tangana: There are still classes, but also writers that seek literature where others only see confetti.
“I never thought about this life that I would have to go to consult the archives of the magazine ‘Week’,” jokes Peyró, who has just published ‘the Spanish who fell in love with the world. A life by Julio Iglesias’ (Asteroid books). «What I have tried in this book is not to be culturally condescending. Type: I will leave a moment to read to Plutarch to write about this man. I didn’t want that to happen. Because I do not see the need to defend myself culturally why spend time writing about a man who has sold hundreds of millions of records and has had an impact from Nebraska to Katmandú, ”he continues. So the tone of the text dances between irony and claim, and has that characteristic lightness of the author. For example: “It is possible that with other singers we would like to change the world, but over the years we came to ask ourselves if it was not more honest to limit yourself, like churches, to make people happy at weddings.”
Ignacio Peyró, portrayed in Madrid
Before a biography, ‘The Spanish who fell in love with the world’ is a profile, that is, an exercise of style and, at the same time, a portrait of an artist and a country: it would be very difficult to understand what Spain is without Julio Iglesias and the arrival of the bikini to the Alicante coast. Somehow, through Julio Iglesias Peyró revisited the twentieth century, the passage of gray to color. «It is that the father of Julio Iglesias was in the great speech of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, which is that of the Theater of Comedy. It is a historical thing. And then, however, it moves and in the 80s it looks like a lifelong Democrat, like so many others. It is very curious: the Mahón blue shirt for the Lacoste pole with a stubborn naturalness is running, they leave the founding brandy and begin to drink JB or Gin of import, ”he says. And then he talks about how after the years of hunger the regime decides to open using the excuse of the economy, and in Benidorm a festival is organized to compete with that of San Remo and there it ends up triumphing, also, Don Julio Iglesias, who ends up forever linked to that city. “Benidorm and Julio Iglesias remind us of each other, as, the Dislate is worth, Versailles picks up the mania of the Sun King or Aranjuez returns us the echo of the eighteenth -century laugh of the Bourbons,” adventures the writer.
Peyró repeats that Iglesias is a currant of his, but also that his success is ultimately explained by that vaporous virtue that is charm, charisma, hook. Something has, he insists, that dazzles wherever he goes. «This is the main thing. You always want to explain the success of Julio Iglesias for a series of almost mechanical factors that would produce success as a fatal sum, and the fact is that if you take away the charm of the equation there is no success. And then there is something very important, and it is his determination to leave and succeed out of Spain. He could not have left him, as Roberto Carlos Oa Aznavour did not come out, but it comes out. And its legacy is to normalize first and then ennoble the figure of the Hispanic, Latin, in the Anglo -Saxon world, and especially in the United States, ”he says. “He reaches the pages of musical criticism of the ‘New York Times’, for the first time a Latin crooner arrives there. For the first time the Latin seems to be seductive, elegant, sophisticated ».
Hedonism according to Julio Iglesias
In a time when art was defined by its activism, Julio Iglesias chose hedonism. He remained oblivious to fashions, and perhaps that is why he transcended them until he became a personal brand. «He could have gone to Paris with the philosophers in 1966, but he goes to London, where the most important thing that happens in 1966 is the invention of the miniskirt. It’s destiny, ”Peyró laughs. «Perhaps the great success of his life, and it is something that comes in a casual way, that is that aesthetics. He arrives and suddenly you see that there is a way of living Julio Iglesias, which is the sea, the feet in the sand, a coconuto fainting in the background, the looked at the infinity and perhaps the intuition of a group of blond girls there playing the beach ball. It is the white suit, brown skin … that makes it his, and it is a very important aesthetic intuition. Before we thought of paradise like a garden with orange; Now we think about it as a beach in the tropics. And he is there, with a cast pineapple and his smile ».
‘The Spaniard who fell in love with the world’ might seem a rarity in any trajectory: it is not in Peyró, which continues to explore, as in his newspapers, which he titled ‘You will already sit down’, the charms of the Madrid right, an almost free hole in Spanish literature. “Somehow, Julio Iglesias has been with Real Madrid the only expression of the Madrid right capable of mass transcending all classes,” he writes. «And they have triumphed strong, right? The two are a curious story. In fact, Real Madrid would have to write a good story. There I launch the idea for those who want it, ”he finishes.
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